To get several windows into one screenshot, arrange them side by side first, then capture a region around all of them (⌘⇧4 and drag on a Mac, Win+Shift+S and drag on Windows), or take a full-screen capture and crop it. Neither operating system lets you pick several windows at once: their window-capture modes take one window per capture. If you can’t (or don’t want to) rearrange your desktop, capture each window on its own and put them together in an editor. In hypershot you can paste window captures into one canvas, or use the experimental composite capture, which takes the whole screen with every window as its own movable layer.

The built-in way

Arrange, then capture a region. This is the fastest route and works on both systems:

  1. Move and resize the windows so they sit next to each other with nothing in between that you don’t want.
  2. On a Mac, press ⌘⇧4 and drag a rectangle around them. On Windows, press Win+Shift+S, choose Rectangle, and drag. (Snipping Tool’s Freeform mode lets you trace an irregular outline instead.)

Or capture everything, then crop. Press ⌘⇧3 on a Mac for the full screen, then crop in Preview or Markup. On Windows, use Snipping Tool’s Full screen mode, then its Image crop button.

Both work. The limits are physical: what you get is exactly what’s on screen. The wallpaper, desktop icons and any window in the gap come along, overlapping windows hide each other, and the arrangement has to happen on your real desktop. If the windows don’t fit on one screen side by side, you’re shrinking them to make them fit.

Or capture each window and combine. Window mode (⌘⇧4 then Space on a Mac, Window mode in Snipping Tool) captures one clean window at a time. Put the captures on one slide or canvas in Keynote, PowerPoint, Figma or Paint, and line them up. Clean result, slower process.

With hypershot: paste window captures together

This route uses only stable features.

  1. Press ⌘⇧W on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+W on Windows and click the first window. Window capture can grab a window that’s partly behind others, so you don’t need to rearrange anything.
  2. Capture the second window the same way, and copy it: the Copy action on its card in the preview folder, or ⌘C / Ctrl+C in the editor with nothing selected.
  3. Open the first capture in the editor and paste. The second window lands on the canvas as an image you can move and resize (Media). Repeat for more windows.
  4. Press B for the Artboard, turn on a background, and drag the outer handles to make room for everything. Then arrange the windows inside it.

You end up with the windows you picked, each one whole, on a clean background, with no desktop clutter in between.

With hypershot: composite capture (experimental)

Composite capture is built for this, and it’s marked experimental: it’s still being tested, and the setting that turns it on warns that it may be unstable.

  1. Turn it on in Settings → General → Enable experimental features (see Experimental features). Until you do, its shortcut does nothing.
  2. Press ⌘⇧0 on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+0 on Windows, or choose Capture Composite Screen from the menu bar or tray menu.
  3. Open the capture in the editor.

What you get is the screen your mouse is on, split into layers: your desktop wallpaper at the bottom (on a Mac, the menu bar and Dock are part of it) and each window as its own layer, in its original position and stacking order, with a soft drop shadow.

Then stage the shot after the fact:

  • Delete the windows you don’t want: select and press Delete.
  • Move and resize the ones you keep, so they sit side by side.
  • Restack them with right-click → Bring to Front / Send to Back.
  • Crop to the windows with the Artboard tool (B), and annotate on top as usual.

That’s the “tidy desk” trick: the cluttered screen you actually had, rearranged into the one you wish you had, without touching a single real window.

Which to use

  • The windows already sit nicely together → a region capture, built-in or with ⌘⇧2 on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+3 on Windows.
  • The windows overlap, or the desktop is a mess → window captures pasted together, or composite capture if you’re happy to use an experimental feature.
  • The windows are on different monitors → capture each with window capture and paste them together. Composite capture takes one screen at a time.

For capturing one window cleanly, see how to capture a single window.